Monthly Archives: May 2020

Only Kindness

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Seventh Sunday in Easter, Year A
May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14 Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women…
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 (but what about 4:16?) If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.
John 17:1-11 Protect them in your name that you have given me..so that they may be one as we are one.

O sovereign of glory, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This is the day, in our church calendar, when we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost – a sort of liturgical limbo. It lines up well with the limbo we are experiencing in the Church, between pre-isolation and post-isolation due to the covid-19 pandemic. There’s a lot of buzz about opening the churches, and I want to say that Emmanuel hasn’t closed. The Emmanuel Church building has stayed open to serve those who desperately need shelter and food and other necessities, like loving-kindness, and to allow other essential activities to take place. It never closed. Is Emmanuel Church open for worship? Well the physical pews are not full of people, the chancel is not full with a choir and orchestra, but we have not stopped worshiping together as a community. Nevertheless, we are in a sort of limbo, having left what we have held dear, not knowing when and how a new normal will be. I think it’s safe to say that many of us are feeling bereft and disillusioned, mixed with varying amounts of anxiety, anger, and despair. We are warned that we are still in the early days.

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Keeping Commandments

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Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31 For we too are [God’s] offspring.
Psalm 66:7-18 Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld steadfast love from me.
1 Peter 3:13-22 Always be ready to make… an accounting for the hope that is in you.
John 14:15-21 If you love me you will keep my commandments.

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

One of the things that has happened in this terrible time of pandemic is that our scripture stories of courage in the midst of devastation have become so much more real to me. As I said last week, the world-wide disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic is deeply revealing, disclosing, exposing, clarifying – an apocalypse of biblical proportion. For many of us, our sense of time is all messed up, and I’m starting to think about recent chronological time as “before the pandemic era” and “after the pandemic era.” In these last eight weeks, it has seemed like time has been folding, very much like our Gospel reading for this morning – past, present and future feel particularly distorted and layered in this continuation of Jesus’ very long valedictory speech that is set in the evening before his nighttime arrest. This portion of Jesus’ parting words always reminds me of the instructions that my mother used to leave when I was in high school before my parents went away for a trip (and I always feared that they would leave us orphaned). I am the oldest child, so the list of instructions was accompanied by my mom’s admonition for me to use my best judgment. Okay, I would think, I will, but have you met my brothers and my sister?

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What Is Being Revealed

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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
May 10, 2020

Acts 7:55-60 Filled with a holy spirit.
1 Peter 2:2-10 If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
John 14:1-14 Do not let your hearts be troubled.

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

“Do not let your heart be troubled,” Jesus says at the opening of our Gospel lesson for this morning. And then Jesus says some things that have been troubling the heart of folks ever since! Troubles with this text notwithstanding, the beginning of John 14 is often read at funerals and memorial services for solace. The promise that God has plenty of rooms prepared for us is so beautiful and comforting. Whenever possible, I leave off the second half of verse 6, because it seems to me that a burial service homily is not such a good time to be reading something that sounds so exclusionary. A burial service homily is also not such a good time to be explaining about translating and re-punctuating ancient Greek. I also have to say that the experience of countless “zoom” meetings in the last two months has helped me to see more clearly some of the many rooms where the divine makes a home with you all. 
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The Gate

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Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2020

Acts 2:42-47 They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
1 Peter 2:19-25 So that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness…
John 10:1-10 Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate

O Source of life abundant, may we have the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may, and cost what it will.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but one of the first things that the Mayor of Boston did when it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic would hit Boston hard, was to invite the leaders of faith communities in the City to meet with him via conference call. It was a surreal St. Patrick’s Day in the City of Boston when Mayor Walsh acknowledged that faith leaders had always been there for him and for the city, but the reverse had not always been true.  Since that day, his senior staff has been working more closely than usual with religious leaders to identify people who are most vulnerable and to direct our combined resources to serve them. Weekly conference call meetings begin and end with prayer, led by participants on the call: Muslims, Jews, Christians and others. Thus surrounded by prayer, the content of the meetings focuses on food, water, access to bathrooms, safe shelter for the days and nights, public safety, children, elders, racism, xenophobia, domestic violence, addiction treatment, protecting undocumented immigrants, and financial relief through the Boston Resiliency Fund. After each meeting, the mayor’s office sends a follow-up email with resources, reminders, answers to questions and sometimes requests. Thursday we were asked to remind you to please complete the census reporting so that we get the federal funding that we need for the next ten years. I tell you this in a sermon because it is an example of good shepherding on a day known in church tradition as Good Shepherd Sunday.

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